I was looking for books on retail when I came across this book. While looking through the introduction and contents, I was curious how Sam Walton built his retail empire, Wal-Mart.
This book is written by John Huey and Sam Walton. John Huey is an American journalist and publishing executive who served as the editor-in-chief of Time Inc. It narrates how Sam Walton builds Wal-Mart all the way from a discounting store in Bentonville, Arkansas to the largest retailer in the world.
Here’re what I’ve learned from this book.
- Success takes years to make. It doesn’t come overnight.
- Try everything you can think of to reach your goal without shame or embarrassment.
- Copying from somebody else moves fast.
- The essence of discounting: buy it low, stack it high, and sell it cheap.
- Experiment, sell, and grow.
- How to deal with mistake: talk about it, admit it, try to figure out how to correct it, and then move on to the next day’s work.
- Always check on your competition. Look for the good.
- Play to your strengths and rely on others to make up for the weaknesses.
- Early morning time is tremendously valuable, try make good use of that.
- If you have the real desire and willingness to get the job done, you can make up for the lack of experience.
- Culturally, things seem so different, but people are people, what motivates one group generally will motivate another.
- No need to work with long faces. Together, problems get solved.
- The secret of successful retailing is to give customers what they want.
- Willing to take chances.
- Work hard if you want to go further.
- Always have goals, and set them high.
- Swim upstream. Go the other way.